Do labels really matter? Can a simple little orange button really be seen as that complicated to the non-RSS exposed? You better believe it! Yes, there is no question about it.

Much like anything in this world, it comes down to branding. Think about it. When you think talking dogs chatting it up about tacos, doesn’t Taco Bell come to mind? So would it not be a valid argument that we need the same kind of visual help for RSS/ Atom? (A brand, not a talking dog)

Rogers Cadenhead put together this amusing graphic that I think illustrates quite well the need for a standard icon to subscribe to an RSS feed. He’s got a good overview of the movement towards widespread support of the Mozilla orange broadcast button.

“The benefits of syndication are still a hard sell for non-technical people, seven years after Dan Libby of Netscape published the first format called RSS,” he says. “The use of a common icon and jargon-free language like ’subscribe to a feed’ have the potential to make things considerrably easier.” He points out that IE 7 supports RSS but makes no mention of the word RSS. Source: “thesocialsoftwareweblog”